


three o'clock in the morning

by iridescentjaebum



Category: GOT7
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Unrequited Love, a college au slightly, but instead of flowers it's feathers, if you're expecting a full-blown love story you're going to be disappointed, we're going fake deep about feelings here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 15:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17685923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentjaebum/pseuds/iridescentjaebum
Summary: Amidst rapidly changing seasons and ticking clocks, one thing remains constant - Jaebum just doesn't love Mark back.





	three o'clock in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> this sudden appearance might come as a surprise to some of you, but it's been months since i've started this one and honestly i worked too long on this to let it rot. turned out reflecting my personal love life a little too much for my liking, but oh well, since when do i shy away from writing from my own experience.
> 
> there's a few mentions of blood for tws on this one, though.

A rare mutation, an uncommon mistake in his genes. Deadly.

The taste of these words is dual on Mark’s lips when he mumbles, repeating what Yugyeom just read off a website on his phone. Of course, it _is_ nice to have his ego stroked in this bizarrely twisted way, to be described as rare, perhaps even one of a kind. This rarity has its own bitterness, however; getting labeled as a mutant, a mistake that shouldn't have happened under normal circumstances doesn't sound very bright, no matter how many times Mark stubbornly repeats it, forcing the words to carve itself in his brain.

Mark was sixteen when he choked on a feather for the first time.

It was a small one, so similar to the ones people used to stuff pillows with – barely a centimeter in length and even less in width, milky white – and Mark did have pillows like this, at his grandmother’s place in Taipei. His first thought was that he simply needs to ask for new pillows, because the ones he’s been using were so old they were almost his age, and that feathers were getting into his mouth in his sleep. In the end, it seems like it wasn’t his pillows.

It’s this guy named Im Jaebum.

“What are you going to do, hyung?” Yugyeom asks, putting his phone down and shoving his hands into pockets of his padded jacket. They’re both on swings, in the playground belonging to their neighborhood, trying to catch what could very much be the last rays of sunshine this autumn. Mark kicks a pile of yellow and orange leaves under his feet, a little anxiously, and, while picking on a loose thread of his sweater, shrugs. “People die from this.” Yugyeom adds like Mark wouldn’t be aware of it.

Mark knows. He definitely knows what’s the disease all about by now; he just thought that if it ever happens to him, it will be somehow different.

He has always believed it will be flowers – that’s the _traditional_ way, people are aware of it, and they know what to do when someone accidentally throws up a stem of a rose or something. But it's been more than two years and Mark had to learn that his version of it won't be traditional by any means – the last time he bothered to search, he went from coughing up feathers of a sparrow to blackbird, significantly bigger in size. The one thing that never changed, however, was that nobody has found a cure for it yet – this “branch” of Hanahaki is still under research.

“Are you going to tell Jaebum hyung?” Yugyeom opens his mouth once more and now Mark stares at him like _he_ would be spitting out feathers or doing something equally as dumb.

“That eventually I will die when a feather stabs through my lung or something?” Mark laughs, but his laughter sounds just as bitter as the bleak future he just drew to himself.

“That _if_ a feather ever stabs through your lungs, it’s going to be on him.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

At least Mark doesn’t straight up deny it this time, it’s a progress of some kind – he’s spent a few long months denying that feelings got involved when it comes to Jaebum. Unfortunately, in this story of Mark’s, progress goes both ways, with feathers coming from bigger and bigger birds and hurting him more and more as the years pass.

“He’s not dumb, you know. Ignorant sometimes, yes,” Yugyeom states dryly. “But not dumb. You can pretend it’s his cats hunting every bird they get their paws on only for so long, hyung, I’m surprised this bullshit still works. He’s been dragging his cats to every vet in the city only to get the same answer – there’s nothing wrong with them.”

“Well, if not for me, we wouldn’t know that, would we?”

Yugyeom purses his lips at the stubbornness and plain stupidity of his best friend before jumping off the swings and retreating back into the warmth of his jacket. “Suit yourself. Just don’t ask me to cover up your ass when you start coughing up feathers of, I don’t know, an ostrich in front of him one day. Jaebum hyung still keeps apologizing for one of his cats killing my pet canary whenever he sees me.”

Yugyeom has never had a pet canary; it was a sleepover at his place half a year ago, and Mark thought he’s going to be okay in Jaebum’s presence.

 

Seoul in spring means shy but yet still cold sunrays dancing on the surface of the Han River; the smell of waking nature and anxious blooming of early cherry blossoms. It means restless passersby, so similar to one another from the first glance – faceless, colorless, only an unclear noise like someone would've left the TV on for too long – to Mark, spring always blurs into one huge mass of things and senses ready to swallow him up.

Spring is also see-through umbrellas, the smell of freshly fried rice in school’s cafeteria. Melon flavored milk, looking so similar so snot if you look at the color – it’s not an ideal thing to say when you want to befriend someone, Mark probably wouldn’t say it at all, ever.

Mark’s seventeen, he knows better jokes. 

And yet he still says it when he gets paired with a random dude for a biology project, and the said guy plops into the seat next to him with a pack of melon milk in his hands. The guy is named Jaebum, Mark can read it off his nametag, neatly placed on the chest of his school uniform; and this Jaebum looks a little startled from the get-go, already stressed about the senior year and college, about Korean literature essay due next week, and about many years into the future – it’s _his thing_ to be stressed out about so many things all at once, so he doesn’t really fully process what Mark has said searching for a pen, a pencil, a sharpie, anything, to quickly scribble down the topic for their project.

It comes after a few good moments when Mark has already forgotten about the lame joke, a mere whisper, "What did you just say?"

"What?" Mark leans in a little because it's hard to understand anything among all the people chattering and trying to find their partners, and the teacher trying to silence them. Jaebum's eyebrows are furrowed like he'd be solving an algebra problem – Mark has seen that look before, math is easy for him, so he has time to look around.

“Did you really—”

“Tuan, Im, if you have so many things to say, perhaps you wouldn’t mind sharing them with the rest of us?” the teacher tells; they haven’t realized that the noise in the class has finally calmed down and the lesson is back to its usual boring pace. “I’d like to remind you all that it’s not the right time to let yourselves go. It’s one of the most important years of your lives, so what you’re going to put effort into now, will grow—”

Both Mark and Jaebum doze off three seconds into the speech, keeping their polite gazes up to create an illusion they’re devouring every word about how they’re set for a failure if they won’t become biology experts by the end of this school year. She’s said that last year, and the year before that, and will say it next year. And the year after that, and after, and after that.

Mark shrugs leaning back in his chair, balancing on it a few millimeters from falling backwards. “Yeah, it does look like snot.”

Jaebum simply keeps staring at him and there’s a long pause during which Mark retreats back into his uniform jacket; asides looking stressed, Jaebum also looks a little like he could punch Mark in the eye, class vice-president title gone to hell – it was a sort of unsuccessful attempt of their homeroom teacher to teach Jaebum responsibility and all that – but… Jaebum starts laughing.

It’s only a few giggles at first, escaping through his pinkish lips unwillingly tightly pressed together; weird sounds in a poor attempt to conceal the laughter convulsions. Even Jaebum himself thinks that this is it, this is where he’s going insane, because _he just can’t stop fucking laughing_ , out of all things at a dumb joke told by a guy whom he’s talking for the first time in his life, and who smells like cigarettes his cool friends smoke in between the classes hiding from teachers in school’s backyard. And who also looks a little odd with his blonde hair he undoubtedly has gotten in trouble with teachers for, all messy like he hasn’t brushed it after he woke up. Mark starts laughing too, mostly because of how funny Jaebum looks while actively trying not to bust a lung or burst an aneurysm.

“Tuan, Im, you’re staying after the class.” Their teacher doesn’t bat an eyelash after their laughter stops her amidst reading this definitely super interesting part on cytokinesis. She’s used to giving detentions like it’s a side dish to every meal, but her guts tell her it’s not the last time.

Teachers have this strange trait, they often turn out to be right – there’s no activity in high school bringing people together more than suffering through the same detention. Mark and Jaebum accidentally get themselves into detention next week too, and a few days after that, and a few times more – they just can’t shut up whenever they’re next to each other, an outcome odd enough for both of the guys, known not to be men of many words.

Jaebum's parents don't understand what's happening anymore, because school administration starts calling them to tell that this one American transferee is being a bad influence on their son, and they should do something about that, but Jaebum looks far from becoming trouble – Jaebum is the calmest they've ever seen him. Less stressed, more rested, laughing more often. By the end of the first month of the new school year, lying on the grass in their schoolyard during a free period, backpacks serving as their pillows, Jaebum and Mark are pretty sure they're no less than soulmates.

They have to be – they’re inseparable best friends, they know each other’s secrets. Mark knows Jaebum has once stolen an album from a local music store when he was in his early teens but returned it a few hours later because his conscience was killing him. Jaebum knows that two years ago Mark was caught making out with a foreign student in the locker room of his previous school, and that’s how he got kicked out.

“What was their name?” Jaebum lazily asks, looking up at a plane, a small dot, passing by in the sky and leaving a white trail of smoke after itself. Reasons behind Mark getting kicked out from his former school seem quite fitting to discuss this warm spring day.

“Alex. Does it matter?”

“It doesn’t.” Jaebum’s smile is bright, as he’s sitting up to fetch his backpack after remembering he still has two sandwiches his mom packed him for lunch. He tosses one to Mark, and the latter throws his thumb up after the first bite. It’s his favorite from Mrs. Im.

“Are you jealous, or something?” Mark tells, as expressively as one manages with a mouth full of bread and chicken.

"God no," Jaebum replies, picking something from the sleeve of his uniform and throwing it away on the grass. "For god's sake, did this piece of bread just come from your mouth?"

They hear a school bell, which means Mark has another free period because he didn’t pick Japanese class for the last year; he watches how Jaebum is quickly gathering his things into his backpack and throws his uniform jacket back onto himself, all wrinkly and stained with grass here and there.

It's Jaebum's smile after he says he’s going to meet him after classes later today, that makes Mark _want_ him to be jealous. Or maybe it’s the way Jaebum turns around to wave goodbye one more time. Or perhaps it's the chicken sandwich of Mrs. Im that has Mark's stomach twisting in a weird way as if something is moving inside it.

It’s definitely the sandwich, Mark decides, shaking his head while lying flat on the grass and taking slow breaths to breathe this strange feeling out.

Eventually, it helps, but he sneezes out his first feather a week later.

 

(“I know the drill behind you and Jaebum.” Jinyoung says once, wasted in a party to celebrate the first semester of the last school year being over. Jaebum and Mark’s last school year, as Jinyoung is a year younger than them and mostly just follows Jaebum around like a puppy in love and need of acknowledgment.

Mark slowly blinks at him, trying to see him clearly through the daze of soju-beer bombs he took that night. "The drill. Behind me and Jaebum."

Jinyoung leans in a little, so that no one could hear them – as if anyone would through the best hits of 2008 that are being blasted so loud, you can hear it echoing through the entire neighborhood – and Mark can swear he still smells strawberries in Jinyoung’s cocktail he emptied out a few seconds before opening his mouth. “I know you can cough up feathers. And that’s it’s because of him.”

It doesn’t sound like a threat to expose him, Mark knows the guy a little too well to think like that. It’s just to tell that Jinyoung knows something, a monument to Jinyoung’s hobby and passion of always being right.

“And what are you going to do about it?” Mark sounds defensive nevertheless.

“What are _you_ going to do about it?” Jinyoung’s a little too straightforward when he wants to be and definitely isn’t supposed to.

“Nothing.”

“It’s dumb to die over unrequited love.” Jinyoung reminds him. “It’s not okay.”

Mark only smiles, walking away. It’s a soft smile, surprisingly. “I cough up feathers, Jinyoung. It’s an already established fact that I’m just _not okay_.”

The clock strikes three in the morning.)

 

Seoul in summer is suffocating heat burning your lungs to dust, strange feeling of being wrapped up in a burning plastic wrap as soon as you step outside. Summers is the feeling of sand burning your feet, melting ice cream and road trips. It's the tiring, but at the same time relieving loneliness of the city, where life shows its signs only in the evenings when it's not above thirty-five Celsius anymore.

Summers for Mark mean aimless staying over at Jaebum’s place every other day, trying a new game after another, or a new food delivery app, only to be stuck with a select few anyway.

Jaebum’s quite terrible at gaming because he rarely has the patience to build a solid strategy, and Mark’s really good, so eventually it evens things out, once Jaebum stops taking every lost game personally, and once Mark stops pretending every match is a world championship. Ultimately, he even lets Jaebum win a few matches here and there, lulling him back into feeling happy about finally getting a grasp of the very basics of the game.

“Ha!” Jaebum victoriously throws his arms in the air, game controller long tossed somewhere next to him, when the round ends in a rather humiliating loss on Mark’s side and all-kill on Jaebum’s. Jaebum’s smile is so bright and happy, Mark doesn’t have it in himself to admit he barely pressed a button to resist Jaebum’s attacks. “Where’s all your bragging now, huh?”

Mark shrugs, shoving a handful of potato chips into his mouth, ignoring oil stains on his T-shirt. Nora, one of Jaebum’s cats, demonstratively uses his legs as a pathway to exit the room. “This game is for losers anyway, so enjoy your win.”

Summers also mean that even their bickering is slower than usual, lazy, almost out of a feeling that it _should_ be a good time to banter.

“Stop being jealous.”

“I’m not.”

 “Idiot.”

“Dipshit.”

“Don’t throw that gross American slang at me, it’s not fair when you know I can’t really understand what it means.”

Mark would gladly punch himself in the face that moment, because Jaebum always pouts when they’re bickering, and that’s exactly what he’s doing right now – and he looks incredibly cute, making Mark’s heart flutter and his throat itch in a familiar, albeit unwanted way, with those pouty, almost perfectly shaped lips and eyes, half-closed like two crescents in an attempt not to let laughter slip through—

_Enough, you’re already in too much shit_ – sometimes Mark really hates that voice in his head. The rational part of himself, which at the fragile age of eighteen already knows the risk of letting himself get carried away by his feelings, the irrationality of being in love. He’s aware of what feelings can and _will_ do to him, and yet he’s torn in between wanting to feel – to experience love with all its consequences – and wanting for this all to stop.

"Hungry?" Mark asks instead, trying to drown that tiny voice, and Jaebum only shrugs. They have already eaten two packs of potato chips while gaming today, but he'd be glad to eat something else. That's another strange thing about their summers – it's so hot most of the people usually avoid stuffing their stomachs full, but Jaebum and Mark could probably swallow anything that's put on the table and ask for more; the magic of growing bodies and puberty.

They’re way past the stage where Jaebum would _ask what the fuck do you think you’re doing_ , because Mark’s in _his_ place, so he should be asking this, Jaebum should be the one to go to the kitchen and raid the fridge. By now, the Im household feels like second home to Mark, so he’s confidently striding down the corridor with a huge hole in his white socks. Jaebum notices, but he doesn’t comment on it – not when there’s a matching hole in his socks as well from climbing a tree yesterday.

“You know, there’s something lately…” Jaebum says a few minutes later, absentmindedly looking through a window at an empty street. It’s late afternoon, everyone’s still hiding from the suffocating heat, while Mark’s inspecting the fridge Jaebum’s parents stuffed with food for the weekend as they trusted Jaebum not to demolish the house while they’re away visiting relatives. “Something on my mind.”

“Yeah?” Mark hums, opting for an omelet. One can’t really mess an omelet up, even with cooking skills as poor as theirs – Jaebum has once burned a pot of ramen, for god’s sake – and taking four eggs, adds, “What is it? Girls? Boys? The birds and the bees?”

Jaebum laughs, diverting his stare from empty swings outside to Mark. “Fuck off.”

“If I fuck off, I’m fucking off with the entire omelet.” Mark bites back, looking around for a bowl. “So what is it?”

Jaebum’s still silent, so Mark puts the bowl down. It’s strange, Jaebum’s silence is strange – usually he’s the type to tell everything straight up if he’s either just talking shit like always or trusts a person lot; Mark thinks he falls in the second category, but the odd silence is making him anxious and paranoid –that happens a lot when you have things to hide.

That’s a side effect Jaebum has on him, one of the many, anxiety – ever since Mark realized the feathers falling from his mouth isn’t a thing from his imagination or a coincidence happening every time after he hangs out with Jaebum.

“I’ve noticed… A lot of feathers around.” Jaebum finally says and it starts feeling a bit like Mark can’t breathe again.

In the ideal case scenario, Jaebum ends up never knowing about the biggest fuck up of Mark’s life. In the ideal flow of events, Jaebum never realizes Mark’s in love with him, because then he’d feel sorry and pity is the opposite of what Mark really needs. Ideally, this situation somehow solves itself without any interventions – and exactly that’s why it’s _ideal_ because you just can’t reach the ideal.

In this, there’s no ideal way – it’s only option A or option B. Either Jaebum loves him back or Mark dies. There’s no surgery for him, as opposed to the ones that cough up flowers, and Mark perhaps wouldn’t even want to go through one – with his entire childish idealism, he’d rather stoically die from a broken heart than forget the way he feels about the way Jaebum smiles and sleep talks, the way he curses and gets impatient when things don’t go his way, even the way they sometimes fight.

“Feathers?” Mark repeats, turning to the stove. Not looking at Jaebum right now gives a sense of security, a sense of being assured that Jaebum won’t be able to read him like an open book like he usually does. That’s how Jaebum is scary sometimes, he’s too perceptive and stubborn to not reach the bottom of things if he really wants to. Something tells Mark that this time he _really_ wants to. “What do you mean?”

Jaebum has a frown etched in his forehead when Mark finally musters up the courage to look him in the eye. “Yeah, like… Of birds. I found a few in my bedroom a few weeks ago, I think.” Right, Mark was sleeping over in Jaebum’s bed, because the latter refused to have his guest sleeping on the floor. Jaebum didn’t even move while Mark was coughing and trying to get out of the room, just that Mark thought he did a pretty job in gathering all the feathers he’s coughed up and throwing them away. “Then I found some a few days ago, too, but different kind of feathers this time.” Sure thing, Mark sneaked out to the balcony while Jaebum was busy, to get rid of the feathers in his pockets after his coughing fit on his way to Jaebum’s house. “So I keep wondering…”

“Keep wondering what?” Mark’s voice is a little too sharp, but it seems like Jaebum doesn’t notice the undertones drenched in fear. The eggs Mark doesn’t even remember throwing into the cooking pan, slowly start to burn, but neither of them notices. 

“I thought that maybe… my cats are hunting birds.” Jaebum says and Mark feels a lot of different emotions washing over him all at once. Relief, the urge to cry, and laugh at the same time. He also feels a little pang in his heart, slightly disappointed one – perhaps he still _is_ expecting a happy ending, an ending Jaebum will never be able to give him. “I’ve never found the dead birds, that would be gross, but… My cats have never acted like that, so maybe they’re sick or something, and it might be stupid, but I’m worried—” Words are spilling too fast from Jaebum’s mouth, and Mark feels tired.

“They’re cats, Jaebum.” He replies, a little bitterly. “They hunt sometimes, it’s probably okay. Shit,” he mumbles, finally glimpsing at the eggs he’s been cooking, which by now are a dark brown uneatable mess.

Jaebum jumps in to help and for a brief second his hand brushes against Mark's bare wrist. It's warm, the feeling of their skin brushing against each other's makes Mark feel so, so warm despite being a little disappointed and helpless – but he already feels a familiar tickling somewhere in the back of his throat, in his lungs, too, or maybe it's his stomach? He doesn't know anymore, Mark's tired of trying to tell it apart; but if there's one thing he knows, is what to do about it. It's happened so many times before, it's not a big deal anymore.

Mark takes a deep breath to ease out the urge to cough, at least for a few brief moments, and takes a glass of water, gulping it down in the speed of light, so he could fake choking on water. Seeing Jaebum worried about his best friend running to the bathroom to cough the “water” out is sure better than seeing him scared shitless about it being feathers.

It’s the first time Mark cries after it though because it hurts so much. His throat, because the feathers scratched it, but also his heart.

 

(The other time Jaebum is acting strange comes long weeks, months after the day they burned the eggs and he took all three of his cats to a vet. It’s summer, but a year later, when both he and Mark are freshmen in university, done with their first semester – Mark in applied math and Jaebum in photography.

It’s a few days before the semester officially ends and they’re off to their hometowns for a summer break – Mark’s trying to pack suitcases for a trip to Taiwan to visit his relatives; perhaps that’s why Jaebum is in such a rush, standing in front of Mark’s dorm room door out of breath, his fist raised to knock for some reason unable to finish the move. His fist awkwardly lands on the door once, almost too weak for it to be a decent knock, but Mark isn’t sleeping yet it seems – he opens the door in a few moments, already a bit sleepy and a whole lot confused.

“Jaebum? What are you doing here?” He mumbles. They haven’t been talking much for the past weeks, because Jaebum always had the excuse of being busy and pressured by finals, perfecting compositions for his photographs, literally _anything_ – and Mark let him. He noticed the weird stares one evening when they were out with a bunch of other friends, Jaebum’s lingering stare when he thought Mark wasn’t looking.

Mark doesn’t really mind the drifting apart – it’s a little bit easier to breathe, and the feather situation is a lot more controllable, even if it’s not gone. It’s college, it happens – sometimes people who looked like soulmates do fall out.

Jaebum’s still out of breath when he spills, words flying so fast it seems like they’re like a hot spoonful of rice he wants to get rid of, “Remember when we were seniors in high school and were lying on the grass during one free period and you said you were kicked out of the previous school for getting caught kissing with some Alex in the locker room—”

Mark remembers, and the words Jaebum is saying feel like lukewarm water trickling down his spine.

“Yes.” He says, looking Jaebum right in the eyes and crossing his hands on his chest. “But—”

Jaebum doesn’t listen to anything more than the first word, interrupting Mark like his life depended on it. “What does… What does Alex stand for.” He says, trying to not curse at the pain in his ribs, the indication that running here in the middle of the night from another building isn’t the best idea he’s ever come up with.

Every cell in Mark’s body is screaming alarms, as he tenses up clenching his fists. He’s never had _the_ talk with Jaebum, and it’s late in the night;  he’s coughing up feathers because of his perhaps former best friend, and everything’s _so_ fucked up for a brief moment he doesn’t care about it anymore.

It’s not like he was ever afraid of Jaebum judging him, or cutting their friendship off because of that, but he thought it was a major clue to Jaebum that at one point he could’ve started feeling things for Jaebum himself – it’s overly complicated, sure’ sometimes Mark himself wonders how this piece of information would help Jaebum notice things without any other proper form of communication.

But hey, they’re nineteen – and who told nineteen-year-olds have to be reasonable and follow logic?

Mark takes a deep breath and tells, “Alexander. It stands for Alexander. Why does this matter only now?”

Jaebum doesn’t answer, just keeps looking at him with big eyes, like he would’ve seen a ghost. And perhaps he really saw one, or created one in his own head, because Jaebum just shakes his head looking like he’s near tears, and… runs away.

He runs like he’s being chased, leaving Mark looking at his back getting gone in the darkness of the dorm corridor, with his heart sinking.

Mark's roommate yells him to close the damn door and let him sleep because it's three in the morning.)

 

Autumn is Seoul is a little dual. It’s a stuffy hot mess, almost identical to summers for the first part, and yet still _not quite it_ ; but then again, that first part of any autumn is much like Jaebum's feelings. Rainy, stormy, sometimes not even making much sense and making everyone flinch from loud thunder. Autumns are a little lazy and suffocating, making everyone slow down and coloring tree leaves in various colors – Jaebum's favorite is red, the red leaves falling down on the wet pavement like a metaphor for the scorching heat of their teen years to cold, blue adulthood. The red which is staining tree is anger, red is explosion, it's dumb impulses and rash decision.

This is the kind of red that fits a twenty-two-year-old Im Jaebum the best.

"And exactly what do you expect me to do?" He mumbles, stubbornly staring at his cup of iced coffee. The name on the cup is spelled wrong, making him Jabum, but it doesn't make him smile or make fun of it like it always used to.

He used to go to this particular coffee shop with Mark before they’ve drifted apart completely, exactly after that night Jaebum went to Mark’s dorm. Now they’re already in the junior year of their respective majors, with only one year left to suffer through before getting their long-awaited diplomas. They haven’t talked much after it, the only thing that’s left out of their unbreakable bond is now lingering stares at each other whenever they accidentally bump into each other in the dorms or university’s cafeteria. It doesn’t happen often, applied sciences majors are in another building than arts majors, but sometimes, when they do meet, it almost feels like Mark is trying to say hello to him, lips quivering like it always used to before Mark said something he’s unsure about. He never does though, and Jaebum keeps following suit – he never could really tell _why_ , though.

In theory, Jaebum knows that he played a very active part in their fallout, but theory aside, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why he suddenly tried to do his best to cut off his best friend from his life. Was he scared of something when Mark confirmed what Jaebum heard some dudes and a few girls gossiping about one day, that Mark was into guys? Unlikely – Jaebum has always been the traditional type, but as he never felt too sure about his preferences either, it was dumb to think he could ever shoo Mark away because of it. Was he feeling stupid after such a dumb confrontation at 3 AM in the morning? A little.

Or maybe, just _maybe_ , he subconsciously started putting everything together, the puzzle pieces Mark has scattered all around while trying to run away – that’s his best shot for these years full of chaos. Feathers all around, Mark mysteriously too prone to colds and sore throats, the way he sometimes looked at Jaebum. Maybe everything did make sense from the very beginning.

Yugyeom crosses his arms on his chest annoyed – going all the way here from Namyangju during his week off and getting a stubborn idiot to deal with wasn’t what he had in mind when he embarked on a journey to save Mark’s life in the most literal way one could expect in this case.

“I expect you to be a decent person, hyung, and save your best friends life.” He says, taking a sip of his chocoshake – old habits do die hard – almost matter-of-factly like they'd be discussing a business plan. "I know it sounds dramatic, but I know that you knew everything way before I told you, so it's mostly up to you."

That’s true. Jaebum still hangs out with Jinyoung from time to time, so he definitely knew what happened to Mark by the time Yugyeom called him demanding to meet – with all the graphic details and already calculated possible outcomes, which instead of making Jaebum sad, feeling regretful or sorry made him… angry and bitter. And helplessly stuck.

Mark's illness has progressed rapidly over the years, as one would expect – Jaebum not being around as much as before seemed like it slowed the progress down, but in truth, it made everything worse in a faster pace. With every second Mark felt weaker and weaker, feathers grew even bigger and changed rapidly – they all varied in colors and shapes now, hurting Mark more and more. He's about to drop out of college because he knows that no matter how much he wanted to become a math teacher, he will never be able to finish.

_And it’s all because of Jaebum_ , Jinyoung added back then.

That’s what made Jaebum angry the most, scared, too – strangely it wasn’t because his high school best friend was dying, it wasn’t because Mark was in love with him. It was because of the responsibility those words, this entire revelation, dropped on Jaebum’s shoulders.

Mark’s feelings were now a _responsibility_ , it always is when someone confesses to you, in a way. If you’re a decent person, like Yugyeom worded it, you have to think how to play around it nicely; in the ideal scenario, you reciprocate these feelings and it’s no big deal. In the worst, you already try to make the rejection nice and as painless as possible, without unnecessarily complicating things more than they are. If you’re not an asshole, you feel at least a little bad doing this.

Their feelings become _your_ feelings too, in a very twisted, unwanted way that you have to know how to deal with – and in this case, to top it off, Jaebum is now responsible not only for Mark's feelings but for his _life_ as well. Isn't it a little too much for a twenty-two-year-old to know that another person's life is hanging on a thread because of him and he can't do _anything_ about it? Not because he doesn’t want to, for god’s sake, Mark has been his best friend ever since they were sixteen, but he simply can’t turn his feelings on like he’d be some sort of a charity machine. And in the end, it’s nothing abnormal.

You simply can't expect to start loving someone just because they love you. Some love stories start with two people, one in love and another oblivious to that love, sure – and somehow, they manage to get a happy ending, because the oblivious one somehow always realizes their feelings. And yet Jaebum doesn’t have anything to realize – he’s just not in love, and not all love stories have to reach a happy ending, not all feelings have to be or can be reciprocated. That’s life, and it doesn’t have to be fair all the time.

And yet Jaebum decides to try because he's that _decent person_ Yugyeom has been talking about. It does remind a little of Sisyphean task though – him reaching out to Mark, who’s very much shocked and a little scared; Jaebum is honest, Mark can at least give him that, he doesn’t leave out any _if_ s and _or_ s in this, he makes it clear he knows about Mark’s illness and that he feels sorry about it, and that he’s here to see what’s going to happen if they try to pretend it’s fixable. No definite promises.

Maybe it really is fixable, Mark thinks for a second, lulled into the dangerous feeling of hope, maybe they really found themselves in one of those stories where the oblivious one realizes their feelings. By the time, the illness has reached the stage where his throat bleeds every time Mark coughs up yet another feather, and Mark is so, so scared, that he clings onto everything that meant a possible way for him to survive.

He’s always told he’s not afraid to die because of it, but turns out he’s only human too, and he’s afraid of _everything_ he’s been denying for six years now – perhaps that’s the biggest reason why in the end he accepts the show he and Jaebum both put on to maintain the illusion that not everything’s lost yet.

Jaebum really does try his best – it’s not the regular pretending to love a person and then finding some quick fucks once no one can see; he’s reminded of all the reasons why he got so close to Mark in high school – the crazy laughs they shared, the inside jokes they both still remember, holding hands just to see how it feels.

It feels good, it feels warm, just like those few kisses they’ve exchanged, sending tingles down Jaebum’s spine – but warmth isn’t a remedy here. To Jaebum’s horror, Mark still keeps coughing up feathers, nowadays even bigger than it’s ever been, and he just _doesn’t understand_. Jaebum has always thought that you can solve everything as long as you put effort into it, and at the age of twenty-three, he learns that feelings are one of the many exceptions to this. He still doesn’t love Mark, and Mark only smiles looking at Jaebum trying to contain his anger tears.

"It's okay." He says, voice hoarse from so many feathers constantly scratching his throat. Eventually, he's supposed to become mute, his vocal cords soon won't be able to handle the damage anymore soon. “You don’t have to try anymore.” He whispers. “It’s not your fault it didn’t work out.”

It’s not Jaebum’s fault, he knows it when he steps onto the stage in college to take his graduation diploma and Mark doesn’t, but why does it feel like it is?

Mark, sitting in the audience next to Jaebum’s parents, only lightly smiles as if knowing what Jaebum is thinking. He’s thankful that Jaebum at least tried to do what Mark didn’t have the guts to ask himself, and it only takes a second – when Jaebum turns to spare another glance at Mark and his parents after taking his diploma, he finds only chaos and people yelling, and a bunch of feathers on the ground next to a boy covered in blood, tossed by people running around.

Jaebum recognizes it, it’s swan feathers.

 

("What are you going to do if this doesn't work out?" Mark says when Jaebum first barges into his room back in their hometown to confront him about the whole drill behind feathers and offer to try make things better.

Jaebum doesn’t know; he doesn’t have any plan prepared if this all goes to waste, he doesn’t have _any_ plan, so he remains silent for a moment before mumbling, “It has to work, doesn’t it?”

Mark only lightly smiles, shaking his head. He’s glad to see Jaebum in front of himself after all these years of not talking, he just wishes that it would’ve happened under other circumstances and not because Jaebum feels responsible for his impending death. Or at least that it would’ve happened because Mark himself told him everything, not Jinyoung and Yugyeom.

“People die anyway, Jaebum.” He says, turning into a bookshelf stuffed with books. Not that he reads often, Mark simply has always liked to shuffle through stories to see that typical happy ending, he can remember them all just looking at the covers – a camboy and police intern? Happy ending. A school experiment gone wrong? Happy ending. Two broken lovers in the States manipulating each other into thinking they’re in a healthy relationship? Happy ending. Two secret agents with messed up pasts and PTSD somewhere along the way? Even _they_ got a happy ending, but that’s all in the books – Mark knows that it’s not a book, not a movie, and love, no matter how well faked, won’t shatter all the obstacles.

"Not all of them die when they're twenty-two," Jaebum replies, for a second getting a horrible thought about what would happen if Mark refused his plan.

"You know what I look forward to seeing?" Mark suddenly says, averting his stare from the books to Jaebum, and it turns Jaebum's stare into questioning one. "To see if I ever cough up a feather of a swan."

“Swan?”

Mark nods with a wide, calm smile. “I’ve read about them once, swans. Some of them are silent for their entire life, then upon their death, they sing the most beautiful song ever.” Jaebum clenches his jaw at the word “death”. “I know I won’t suddenly start singing,” Mark continues with a laugh, “But it would be fun to see a feather of something so mythical, even if it’s literally coming from inside me.”

Jaebum refuses to listen to all these death talks and continues convincing Mark to agree with his idea of at least trying to date and develop feelings. The clock strikes three in the morning when Mark finally agrees.)

 

There are no winters in Seoul anymore after Mark dies at Jaebum’s graduation – it’s rather useless to give a name to distinguish different seasons when to Jaebum there’s only one season left for the rest of his life. Nowadays, the world is harsh and windy, and full of snowstorms no matter the month, and it’s always cold; so cold that Jaebum feels the coldness on his skin physically no matter how badly the sun is scorching outside. His palms never get warm anymore and it feels like he’s always shaking and like no number of blankets will ever mend his shivering skin.

Asides the eternal cold, in Jaebum’s life now there’s space only for dreams – one dream, to be specific, and it always repeats itself like it would be put on a horrible loop Jaebum at first tried to kill off, but eventually let go and accepted as a permanent part of himself.

And in that dream, Jaebum once again finds himself standing next to a busy street somewhere close to his and Mark’s high school, surrounded by a huge number of their classmates and other students. Mark is casually standing on the opposite side of that street, calmly watching people and cars passing by in a rush so unfitting a warm spring day, with a pack of melon milk. His hair is as blonde and messy as Jaebum remembers it being, and it doesn’t take long for Mark to notice that Jaebum is staring like a creep.

Mark's face shifts into a wide grin as he waves to Jaebum and Jaebum smiles back – of course, he does, feeling this warm and fuzzy feeling in his stomach. In this particular dream, he's in love with Mark, not the other way around; and that's a feeling Jaebum has questioned for longs weeks and months whenever he wakes up, but in the dream, he simply rolls with it.

"Hey, Im Jaebum!" Mark shouts, trying to outvoice the never-ending chatter of people surrounding them. It sounds soft and even thought Jaebum has this dream at least several times a week, it sounds less and less familiar over the time, like he'd be slowly forgetting how Mark sounded like. "I love you!"

It’s the dreaded part which always takes Jaebum aback, the turn of the events where his feelings get reciprocated as if this dream’s sole purpose is to stuff in his face everything he could’ve never given to Mark.

“I love you!” Mark repeats, even louder. “Thank you!”

Jaebum wants to yell back too, to say that he loves Mark, but that's the reality bit which always sneaks into the dream – and even in a dream where everything's possible Jaebum can't utter those words out, because he doesn't want to lie, honesty being the only thing he could ever give. And Mark has always understood it, whether in a dream or not; Jaebum has always tried his best even when it didn't work out and that's all Mark could ask for – that's why he always flashes an understanding smile in the dream while Jaebum is trying to force the words out of his mouth, only to be left with a few feathers in his palm.

Jaebum always wakes up soon after this, and there are always tears rolling down his cheeks. Sometimes he can swear he can hear someone singing, a silent but beautifully sad song – he'd remember Mark and his wish to see swan feathers and myths about swan's last song; but then, for a second it always feels like it's coming from inside of him, echoing through the darkness of the night.

And in a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

**Author's Note:**

> the last sentence is a quote from F. S. Fitzgerald's "The Crack-up", i've been working with that text for one of my psychoanalysis classes earlier, and three o'clock in the morning in that context means depression, or in this one, something really sad - note how nothing good happens here when 3 AM is mentioned. (as if anything good happens here at all lol)
> 
> \---  
> It’s kind of weird, because it’s not the first time I’m leaving an author note like that, but it feels strange every single time. But then again, I’d probably be rambling and moping around if I didn’t write it, because I feel like I owe you some explanations about this whole dropping writing thing I’ve talked about on twitter ages ago. 
> 
> It’s been almost 3 whole years since I first published a fic here. Not in Markbum tag specifically, we all know where I started, and the ship isn’t the point. Back then, when I was 21, life was different – yeah, it was a little busy, but I was just an undergrad student with like 5 classes a week, which I didn’t even have to attend. So I kept doing what I loved – I wrote. I wrote a lot, can you imagine I used to update two times a week with solid 3k words in every chapter? 
> 
> And I somehow “made” it, people were reading my fics, they were following me on twitter and all, and I was like, woah, I finally have something to give to people. So I wrote, I kept writing, and plot was followed by a plot, and by another plot, I was burning with both inspiration and passion… and then it stopped. After writing Winter bird and Chewing gum, nothing ever felt the same anymore – in my eyes, nothing felt good anymore, I straight up grew to hate my fics, the fact that I’m super critical of myself and whatever I do, didn’t help either.
> 
> It didn’t help that I earned a title of being That Angst Writer, and the “hello I’m back to pain you” was a running joke whenever I posted something. It’s not bad – in way, I really did write some really messed up fics (this one being among them) that I cried myself while writing, and I’m hopelessly incapable of soft stuff; but it just put me into very clear boundaries of what I’m expected to write, and where’s my place in this whole writing scheme. And I didn’t realize how, even though I kept writing still, I was slowly going tired of it. I wanted to write something different, something that would pull me out of the She’s That Angst Writer zone – but I was incapable, I still am, perhaps. 
> 
> So naturally, I thought that maybe it’s the ship I’m writing. I had my issues already, I was drifting away once I found the Markbum world – so I dropped them, I posted my last fic on that account early this year, thinking that that’s it, that’s the solution, time to move mountains and write something Different for Markbum. And I couldn’t, I was stuck in a loop of writing what I personally like – the heavy stuff, but hating people telling me they cried. And life was changing too – I was writing my bachelor’s thesis, I found a full-time 8 to 5 job, I got into master’s at the same time, I’m moving abroad for studies soon… and on top of the whole inner turmoil, there happened the fact that my body just can’t survive this, either. I physically don’t have time to write anymore, because I come back home only to eat dinner and sleep. 
> 
> And then I realized… it’s not the ship. It’s not the fandom. I just don’t likr to write anymore. For now. I don’t wanna do the same mistake I did with my previous fic account and say that I’ll never come back, that I will never write anymore – I couldn’t say that, writing has always been and will forever be my outlet. But for now… 
> 
> Yes, I’m happy when I write, but I’m happier when I don’t. I’m happier when my brain doen’t tell me to compare myself with others, happier when I don’t fall next to my laptop while editing a chapter after 9 hours of work and additional 4 hours of classes. I’m happier when I can go on this website to read, not to update some fic I grew to hate, because it will never be good enough for my own standards. So that seems like the best option for now. 
> 
> Anyhow, tl;dr is that it’s been 3 years of constant writing, and juggling between my personal life and writing, and it’s reached the point where all the juggling balls are falling down and smacking my head. You’re the true MVPs, though – a lot of you were here since the beginning, surviving through a whole slew of angst and tears and me throwing fits on twitter, and yelling, and getting into fights, and honestly, iridescentjaebum would be nothing, just a mere record in databases if not your support. And that’s what I’m gonna be forever thankful for. I couldn’t have wished for more than I got from you, guys, so peace out, maybe we'll see each other some day, maybe not, who knows?


End file.
